Social Media & Viral Marketing

Socialbakers has released its latest "Socially Devoted" figures for Q1, and the results are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the average response rate grew 6% points quarter-over-quarter to 38%, after only improving by 4% points in the preceding 6 months. But on the other hand, that means that significantly fewer than half of questions posted to brands' Twitter profiles were answered. What's more, the average response time increased by 10%, from 6 hours in Q4 2012 to more than 6-and-a-half hours in Q1. Read more »

Americans may not be as keen to share personal and other content online as citizens in other countries, suggests a survey from Ipsos OTX. The study asked respondents to identify how much they share online - including status updates, feelings, photos, videos, and links. Across the 24 countries tracked, an average of 24% said they'd best describe their amount of sharing as either "most things" or "everything." But that figure dropped to just 15% among American respondents. Read more »

A global shift in marketing budgets from traditional to digital media has been well documented of late, and new survey results from Martini Media suggest that UK marketers are hopping aboard the digital marketing train. 95% of brand advertisers and agencies responding to the survey said they will increase their digital marketing spending this year, with fully 48% of total budgets going to digital media. In particular, 63% will increase their social media investments, 57% their mobile investments, 40% their video investments, and 36% their rich media investments. Read more »

Netflix isn't the only video service eating up North American bandwidth, although it is the largest, according to [download page] Sandvine's "Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H 2013." The report reveals that Netflix accounts for 32.3% share of North American peak downstream fixed access traffic, a slight dip from H1 2012, with YouTube next at 17.1%, up from 13.8% in the researchers' H1 2012 study. When it comes to mobile traffic, the opposite trends are true: YouTube leads with 27.3% share of peak traffic, but is down from 31%, while Netflix is far back at 4%, but up from 2.2% the prior year. Read more »

Some retailers aren't sold on the concept of digital channels being the primary driver of future growth, at the expense of stores. But most do see the value of digital channels in driving traffic to stores - and they have some thoughts on which work best once the consumer is actually in the store. Results from RSR Research's "The Relevant Store in the Digital Age" [download page] reveal that nearly all retailers see their e-commerce sites as having a lot (58%) or some (38%) value in driving traffic to stores. And while there's some angst about showrooming, 87% recognize that smartphones have a lot (50%) or some (37%) value in driving store traffic. Read more »

56% of UK consumers say they would never use a company again if faced with a negative customer service experience, according to survey results from NewVoiceMedia. Beyond taking their business elsewhere, 29% would tell their friends and peers about their bad experience, while 19% would post a review online and 14% would complain on social media. Much as they'd punish companies for a bad service experience, though, these consumers would reward them for a positive one. 74% of respondents said a positive customer experience would lead them to be more loyal, and 71% would recommend the company to others. Read more »

Senior executives from around the world aren't that enthusiastic about social media marketing, according to new figures released by Doremus and the Financial Times from their annual "Decision Dynamics" survey. 51% of respondents feel that advertising in social media is more intrusive than advertising in a magazine or newspaper, while only one-third believe that a social media presence enhances a company's reputation. The study results indicate that, in general, while executives are embracing online and mobile activities, they're not doing so at the expense of traditional media. Read more »

Twitter activity is highly concentrated among a small subset of heavy users, according to an analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois, published in First Monday. The study used Twitter Decahose as the basis of its analysis, with the data set examined over a period of 39 days constituting about 0.9% of Tweets ever sent and 35.6% of all active users as of December 2012. Among the highlights of the study was the revelation that the top 1% of Twitter users accounted for 20% of all tweets. Expanding that out a little, the top 5% accounted for 48% of all tweets and the top 15% accounted for 85%. Read more »

Just 35% of advertisers target many small, specific audiences when buying ads or paying to promote content on social media properties, according to [download page] a study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Kenshoo Social. The study reveals that the most common practice among these professionals (who spend upwards of $100,000 a year on social advertising) is rotating through multiple creatives (60%). Even when using targeting, paid social media advertisers are using more basic types, according to the study. Read more »

In conjunction with a new monthly e-commerce tracking initiative, Shopzilla has released research from a survey of online shoppers conducted immediately after their purchases from the Bizrate Insights Network of more than 5,200 e-commerce retailers in the US and Canada. The data shows that buyers were most likely to have first seen their most recent online purchase while surfing around online (29%) or when looking to find something specific (25%). Beyond those top 2 points of inspiration, store emails (11%) emerged as a key source, cited by more respondents than magazines (8%), ads (6%), blogs and other web content sites (4%). Read more »